Using upcycling to upskill
MATT Rendell wants to upskill people and create a fairer and more balanced society, and believes teaching people how to create beautiful things from garbage is a good place to start.
His passion is upcycling. “Upcycling is the art of taking goods that have been used for another purpose and reusing/reclaiming to create something else out of them, it’s different to recycling,” Mr Rendell said.
“I love it, I’ve been doing it for 21 years and the older I get the more I love doing it – I’m a bit of a greenie at heart, a bit of an environmentalist, and a lot of the pieces that I build – up to 90 per cent of them, sometimes 100 per cent – are all waste product that would have been thrown to the tip, so it’s been reused or repurposed for furniture.
“I get all sorts of reactions to my pieces, rarely negative, mostly I get that ‘Wow’. People are just blown away.
“On the geometric pieces they see all these old timbers that have been bookmatched and shaped and utilised – it’s warm, it’s attractive,” he told Dubbo Photo News.
Mr Rendell says his programs to upskill people can be used as drivers for job creation, a stepping stone he believes leads to a fairer and more equitable society.
“In 2017/2018 I ran several Work for the Dole programs in Narromine and we upcycled a café, we set up an upcycling workhub, and I was teaching people how to re-use and upcycle old timber frames and pallets and make them into furniture and other things,” Mr Rendell said.
“The participants loved it – it was incredible how, when they learnt how to upcycle, how to take the waste and turn it into something of value, it positively impacted them personally. So I think for a lot of people it reminds them of their own story.”
He says an immense social good could appear if these programs were properly resourced and continually funded so it wasn’t the stop-start and uncertainty of Work for the Dole.
“I think this sort of program, the waste-to-art sort of thinking, is a really good idea because each piece of furniture that I make, I try to make sure I include the back-story of where the pieces came from and particularly what’s called the patina, the ‘wared’ condition that it comes in. Ironically that becomes the beauty,” Mr Rendell said.
“When people repurpose things... as they work on it they reflect within and realise that they’re actually a little bit of the story as well. So the pieces that are built are reflections of the people that build them, and it’s always positive.”
He believes our current wasteful western society is disconnected, not making it easy for people to embrace the simpler things in life.
“When you have a society that’s very much selfish and materialistically-focused, it’ll be individualistic, but when you have a society that’s generous and more community-focused, you’re always looking after each other and it’s all about give rather than take. It’s an attitude issue and I think ultimately it’s a heart issue,” Mr Rendell said.
“To try and keep up with the Joneses is the worst possible thing a person can ever do. In all the mentoring and coaching and development I’ve done, (what works best is) creating those safe places where people will feel confident to explore possibilities.”
He said he’s seen first-hand the value people can get from creating valuable things from what society regards as junk.
“At Narromine I had four ladies who, when they finished their Work for the Dole, entered into nine months of volunteering, two days a week, because of how much the upcycling project changed their lives – and two of them ended up getting employment out of it. That’s how much impact it had because in their story they took something that was regarded as waste and made it into something valuable – life imitating art,” Mr Rendell said, saying that just having people apply for jobs to tick a bureaucratic box is insane.
Instead, he believes, it should be all about assisting people to understand that they are worthwhile and that they can contribute.
“Everybody’s got their place in the tribe and everybody’s got their part to contribute and I think what happens is that we don’t take the time to always listen to somebody’s story; and particularly if someone’s not a high performer, well they don’t get a look-in,” Mr Rendell said.
“Some of the people who’ve inspired me the most are people who the world may not consider to be productive value-givers, but actually when you look behind the scenes they’re amazing, they just might not do it the way high-level business and high-level incomes would expect.”
You can follow some of Matt Rendell’s creations on his Facebook page.